"Russia has taken back Crimea from Ukraine. True, but only after
a U.S.-backed coup in Kiev replaced the elected pro-Russian
regime.

"Russia has intervened to back Bashar Assad in Syria. Yes, but
only after our insurgent allies collaborated with al-Qaida and
ISIS to bring him down. Is Russia not allowed to support an
ally, recognized by the U.N., which provides its only naval base
on the Med?

"Russia has meddled in our election (allegedly, -ed.) And we have meddled in the
affairs of half a dozen nations with “color-coded revolutions.”
The cry of “regime change!” may daily be heard in the U.S.
Capitol.

"Putin is not Pope Francis. But he is not Stalin; he is not
Hitler; he is not Mao; and Russia today is not the USSR. Putin
is an autocrat (elected - ed.) cut from the same bolt of cloth as the Romanov
czars.

"His cooperation is crucial to the peace of the world, the
freedom of the Baltic States, an end to the Syrian civil war,
tranquility in the Persian Gulf, and solving the North Korean
crisis.

"While our tectonic plates may rub against one another, we are
natural allies. The Russia of Tolstoy, Pushkin, Solzhenitsyn and
the Orthodox Church belongs with the West.

"If America stumbles into a war with Russia that all our Cold
War presidents avoided, the Russia baiters and Putin haters will
be put in same circle of hell by history as the idiot war hawks
of 1914 and the three blind men of Versailles in 1919."